


HE.

by heartofstanding



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Manipulation, Mind Games, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 11:46:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4303719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>12 things that never happened to Lucas North aka John Bateman. Fix-it fic for Series 9 that fixes nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	HE.

**Author's Note:**

> Parts of this story are left vague for the reader to decide what really happened and what the 'truth' is. However, some interpretations are darker than others and, as such, I have warned for these in the tags, but have avoided using the archive warnings. For example, there is a major character death if you read the story that way, but if you don't, there is no character death. 
> 
> The idea for this fic came about when bending-sickle and I talked about Series 9 of 'Spooks' and the possibility of a fix-it fic came about. Bitter laughter was involved.

**i.**  
He is born Lucas North.

**ii.**  
At university, he aspires to pass unnoticed. He feels a faint thrill each time his professors squint when they look at him, as if they're trying to remember if he's been there all along. In each class, he watches his peers carefully and plays a role that blends in. No one really notices him – except, that is, Maya.

Maya _sees_ him. She winds her arms about him and kisses him and tucks his hand into her pocket. She draws him into her orbit, kisses him in the library and the lecture hall, makes him laugh during tutorials. He forgets the roles he plays and becomes hers. She says she loves him, and he believes her like he's believed no one else.

They go back to her small flat one late afternoon. There's no blinds so the sunlight streams in, casting the room in amber, catching each speck of dust floating in the air. He holds her fast against him, tells her things, a stream of words coming from his heart. They have sex on top of the covers, her arms tight around him. In the aftermath, they lie side-by-side and he thinks this might be the greatest thing he's ever known. He thinks, _love_. He thinks, _Maya_.

**iii.**  
Someone says to him, _you should be a spy_ and he thinks, _yes_.

He applies to MI-5 during the last year of university, makes it through the first round of tests. While he's waiting to hear back, he goes on holiday. He works in a casino to make ends meet and meets a man called Vaughn. Vaughn seems like someone to aspire to be like – smart, savvy – and he attracts attention, uses it to breeze through shut doors, dragging Lucas behind him. Yet there is something about him that makes Lucas half-afraid, though it doesn't make him wary enough.

Vaughn offers him a drink and place to sleep and introduces Lucas to John Bateman. It's then Lucas starts losing time and – everything really.

There's a bad taste in the back of his mouth that won't go away. There are bruises and scratches on his body he doesn't recognise. Every part of him aches. He forgets days and nights. He's lucky he's got Vaughn whispering to him, telling him where the days and night go. He's lucky he's got John looking out for him. If it wasn't for them, he'd be completely lost.

**iv.**  
He is John Bateman and John Bateman is him. It's a game Vaughn likes to play. They look enough alike and take each other's names, sign up for memberships to various places posing as each other. Vaughn cackles and claps his hands, calls Lucas John and John Lucas. It gets messed up in Lucas's head, he can't remember who he really is and instead becomes who Vaughn says he's supposed to be. He has a wallet full of cards with different names and it sets his heart thumping in a panic: Lucas or John or Lucas or John or Lucas or John.

Vaughn and, and (who he thinks is) Lucas try to help. They say his name with confidence, steadiness but it slips from him like water. He can't even be sure that they tell him the same name. Words and names become like a nail, dragging right through his brain. Nothing is certain.

**v.**  
He is John Bateman.

**vi.**  
The room spins as he staggers to the table. Vaughn and Lucas are standing guard there, over a brief case. Their eyes are eager and hungry, but Vaughn waits for John before he opens the case. John blinks stupidly, trying to understand the mess of wires and metal and a blinking red light. Vaughn turns to him, smiling, words slipping through his teeth – it's a bomb and there's a plan. Vaughn's going to use it, and he, John, has to—

'No,' he says, feels the words rush from him in a long stream, _no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, nonononononononono_.

Vaughn takes him by the shoulders, sits him down and fixes him a large drink. Vaughn's hands are shaking and John notices it, like he used to notice everything. But maybe its Lucas who notices everything. There's a clink of metal against glass and the brandy Vaughn brings him is cloudy and tastes wrong, but he drinks it because Vaughn tells him to.

**vii.**  
He wakes up in hospital. _Overdose_ , the doctors say, then, _you fell down a flight of stairs, apparently_. His head aches and they take photos of the ruin his body makes, the flash blinding. He can barely think. Everything hurts and he drifts in and out of darkness while doctors and nurses talk to him, trying to make him understand that he needs to get off the drugs. He didn't take anything. He doesn't understand.

He sleeps, wakes up to a hospital in chaos.

A crowd is in the corridor outside his room, panicked and sobbing. He hears something about an explosion, about the British Embassy and seven dead, the toll rising. It pricks at something in his memory, something he's sure he knows and something he's sure he should tell someone. But Vaughn is there, pulling the IV out of his arm and gathering up pain medication. Vaughn is there, giving him clothes to wear and bundling him down the stairs before anyone can notice he's gone.

**viii.**  
Lucas North is dead on the floor.

Vaughn says he did it, but they'll take care of it, together. They have to act quickly, get out of here because of the bomb, so _please, John, get your shit together._

**ix.**  
The nurse that looks after him in the UK looks a bit like Maya. Her hair is blond and curly and she wears thick glasses, but she looks like Maya. Her voice is a gentle snake winding around him, giving him the last of the story, telling him that he has to pretend to be Lucas North now. He'll save his own skin that way. What's more, he'll do Lucas North proud – go on and do the things Lucas always wanted to do but couldn't (Lucas North is dead because of him).

He'll protect his country, risk his life to help others, be the best in the field.

It doesn't sound right.

'No,' he says, 'Lucas – he was the one with the bomb.'

'No, John,' she says, 'That was you.'

**x.**  
He's jittery in his interview, half-expecting MI-5 to be onto him. They'll have done background checks, all they have to do is look at the folder they've got on Lucas North and see he's not the man in the photographs. They'll look and go, _you're not Lucas North_ and everything will come undone. But they don't. They accept him, welcome him into their fold and he wears Lucas North like a mask. He's always been good at that. He even fools himself. He saves lives, protects his country and spends eight years in a Russian prison, believing he deserves every moment of that hell. Somehow, he survives.

He doesn't see Vaughn or Maya again. He (almost) forgets they exist.

**xi.**  
Everything comes undone all at once. Vaughn is back, making threats and whispering in his ears. _John_ , he says, _John, you're not Lucas._ John finds Maya again, takes her anger onto himself. A voice whispers in his ear that he doesn't deserve this and it sounds like the real Lucas, the one he murdered. Everything comes undone.

He's taken to a safe house and left alone. Then Harry comes to see him.

Harry plays him two videos, one after the other. Maya first, Vaughn second. Maya stares down at her hands the whole time, her voice is wet and shaky. She talks about what they did to him – the long game, the manipulation, the drugs, the lies, the mind games. She was the nurse. He never recognised her.

Vaughn is confident, cocky, staring at Harry as though meeting a rival for the first time. When he finishes, he lifts his head and stares at the camera, at John, smirking.

John doesn't speak. He doesn't believe anything he's told. Not anymore.

Harry lays out the hospital admission papers, the photos of his bruised body. He barely remembers it. Harry points out the dates on the papers, then shows him an newspaper clipping on the bombing. The dates don't make sense – _he did it_ , but the dates say he can't have, that he was in hospital at the time.

Harry must feel guilty about Russia, must want to try and save him. Or Harry wants something and this is the only way to get it. There's no possible way any of this is real.

Harry reaches out and touches his hand. It's soft, warm and fleeting. Harry says, 'When you're ready to come back, we'll be happy to have you again, Lucas.'

_Lucas._

**xii.**  
He's not sure why and how he ends up at the top of the building, only that his head hurts.

He is John Bateman pretending to be Lucas North.  
He is John Bateman.  
(John Bateman is dead.)  
He is Lucas North who pretended to be John Bateman so much he started believing it.  
He is Lucas North.  
(Lucas North is dead.)

But that's not quite right.  
(nothing makes sense.)  
(nothing is certain.)

He is John Bateman.  
He is John Bateman.  
He is John Bateman.  
He is John Bateman.  
He is John Bateman.  
He is John Bateman.  
He is Lucas North.

He is _destroyed_.

He is Lucas North.  
(Lucas North is dead.)

He is Lucas North.  
(Lucas North is dead.)

It doesn't matter.

 

He will.  
He is.  
He.

He is nothing.


End file.
